


A Test of Will

by Windryder1



Series: Pokemon GO! Minis [3]
Category: Pokemon GO
Genre: Aurora - Freeform, Blanche - Freeform, F/M, Olivia - Freeform, Pokemon - Freeform, Prequel, Prof. willow, harmony center, homelife, pokemongo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9071614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windryder1/pseuds/Windryder1
Summary: Professor Willow and his wife come to a painful decision to separate that changes the course of their family, their lives, the lives of their twins, and Willow's purpose forever.(short one-shot)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ok. Here it is. :) I hope you enjoy it. This is Willow-centric. It's a prequel that shows what happened before he encountered and caught Lugia, and made his promise. I don't think the guy has many stories about him.

\--A TEST OF WILL--

He came home late.

Again.

Professor William Willow cringed at the loud creak from the door shamelessly proclaiming the master of the castle’s return. He really needed to lubricate the door hinges. Opening it slowly made no difference. The telling sound announced he’d come back far after dinner, and that was usually followed by an angry glare from his wife.

He shook out the wet black umbrella (nature decided to zip open the clouds on his walk home) and hung up his overcoat to dry. The university he taught at 3 days a week was only a mile away from home, so on days like this, he was thankful for the close distance. Another day at the lab swallowed up his hours one too many times.

No spousal ranting met his ears. In fact, nothing did. That worried him. He feared his wife had set up an ambush in frustration. He wouldn't put it past Olivia. She was brilliant, crafty, beautiful, intuitive, and had a tendency to create the best outside-the-box revenge pranks he'd ever seen back in their college days. The happiest start of his new life began the moment Oliva Leighton took his last name. 

So, he wouldn't be surprised if she'd set up a booby-trap to get back at him.

Or maybe she’d simply gone to bed. It was midnight, after all, and she had to be up at 6am to get the girls ready for school before leaving for work. 

He stepped cautiously into the kitchen to grab a quick snack before sneaking upstairs.

“I put the girls to bed by myself again tonight.”

Willow paused with the refrigerator door cracked, the yellow light spilling into the dimly lit room. It cast a slim beam across the tired green eyes of his wife resting her chin against the knuckles of her left hand at the table. Her long brown hair draped over her shoulders to brush the wood-glazed surface. A mug of coffee clutched in her right hand. Time had pulled the heat out of it long ago. “I’m sorry, Liv.” He opened the door the rest of the way, grabbed a plate of leftovers, and closed the door. “I know I should have called, but…” he popped it into the microwave and pushed the timer. “Mark and I finally had a breakthrough in specific environmental effects on a normal type’s hatching process when exposed to various environments for controlled periods of time. It hatched today."

"What was it?" She asked dryly.

He recognized her placating eyes and posture. "A pidgey."

"My condolences." She said with a sarcastic bite.

He tried to ignore that, but her mood and response stuck to the back of his mind like caramel on a brick wall. "You wouldn’t believe the results from it, though. This time we have a lead on Titan development. It—“

“I don’t care about the lead, or the pidgey, or the results.” She cut him off with her low, stern tone. “We discussed this, Will. You’ve been late every day for the past month. Either you’re at the university’s lab, or your own lab, or Mark’s lab. You’re rarely ever home.”

“Yes, we did discuss this. You know the convention is in a week. I’m on a time crunch to get this research into a presentable form, or our funding goes up in flames.” He took the nuked food from the microwave and shoved a bite of dry potatoes into his mouth. True, they would have been better freshly mashed with some butter and sour cream.

“You’re more concerned about the children of pokemon than you are about your own.”

“That’s not fair,” he snapped, setting the plate on the table harshly enough to rattle the fork against the ceramic. Though the argument became heated, they were both aware enough of the two small girls that may overhear them, so they kept their voices down. “I love my girls.”

“Then why can’t you be happy being a university professor? You make good money, you’re sharing your knowledge with the next generation. You’re smart, Will, but this project is consuming you.”

The food became invisible. Only the words of his wife surrounded him. “Are you asking me to settle?”

Olivia looked up at him, not intimidated that her husband refused to sit down. “Of course not. I’m asking you to think of your family. Blanche and Aurora…they won’t be children for much longer. We only have a few years left with them, if they don’t decide to go on a journey. They just started their pokemon training. They could make that decision at any time.”

“I understand that. Believe me. I’m doing this for them. I won’t settle, because I want to be an example to them that they should never settle.”

“How can you be an example to your children if you’re never here?!” She covered her mouth quickly, praying her outburst didn’t wake the twins.

He pressed the tips of his fingers against the table's surface next to the plate, keeping his voice sincere, urging, and hushed. “I know the answer is there, Liv. We’re so close. Mark and I have an idea about Shamouti Island with the legendaries and Lugia, and we think the strange current that appeared contains answers. We're checking it out while we're there. Please, bear with me a little bit longer.”

“I’ve been ‘bearing with you’ on this project for 3 years. I assisted you. But lately, it’s all you talk about.” Her tone lowered even more and she leaned slightly forward. “We haven’t had sex in a month.”

“Liv, I—“

“But I can deal with it. My needs are far outweighed by the needs of those two ten year olds upstairs with their eevees. I will happily go a year without feeling your touch if it means you’ll guarantee you’ll come home for dinner every night and we can be a family again.”

“We are a family—“

“Will, you’re obsessed.”

“’Obsession is the best bedfellow of passion,’ Liv. Isn’t that what you told me when we met in grad school?”

Her husband continually exasperated her. It wasn't just the past month that spurred this conversation. It contained little things over their 11 years of marriage that piled up. Which is why she'd already made her decision before he walked in the door. She pushed the coffee away with the carefulness of moving a chess piece on a glass board. “Do you remember what today was?” Her eyes flicked up to his, seeing the cluelessness within his own green irises. “It was—“

“The girls’ ballet recital,” he interrupted. Shame and guilt courted his words. “Crap.”

“Aurora performed a perfect pirouette, and Blanche was a graceful fairy. They were beautiful. And you missed it.”

He hung his head. Letting the guilt overcome him. He owed his girls a serious apology that may or may not involve going out to catch a ponyta. “I’ll make it up to them.”

Oliva stood and moved around the table to cup her love’s stubbled chin in her small hands. “You are my husband, Will. I miss you.” She leaned in gently to brush her lips against his, then stepped back. “I’m keeping them out of school tomorrow. We need a family day. We need to talk about this with the girls when we're not exhausted and can think straight.” She turned to walk back to the stairs leading up the bedrooms. “Stay home--that is, if you can manage to stay away from the lab for one day.”

He stared at the abandoned coffee and his cold food and sighed. Tomorrow would not hold the memory of a pleasant day. He ate the food and laid down on the living room sofa. Though his wife hadn’t said it, he was smart enough to read between the lines. She missed him, but tonight, his side of the bed was better off without him.

* * * *

The rain continued on into the night. The following day brought clear skies and sunshine. Though the summer air breathed its warmth through the city, the air around Willow remained stifled and cold. They sat down with their twin daughters for a breakfast of waffles, eggs, bacon, and juice.

The revelation to their twin daughters didn't go smoothly. He didn't think it would. Hearing that your parents are separating is never easy. Aurora shut down. Blanche cried, hugging her eevee. No matter how many times he assured them their mother was only spending the summer at their grandparents house, and would return when they'd worked out their problems, the girls were stuck on that one word: separating.

He explained that they weren't getting a divorce. They wanted to stay together, but at that moment, they couldn't live together. When he returned from the annual convention, Olivia would move in with her mother, and Will would stay here. He used the nicest words in his vocabulary to calm down his daughters. He and Olivia insisted that they still loved them, and each other.

So, the girls were given a choice: They could both stay with him, or with with their mother. Whatever their decision, they were always welcome to call both places their home.

Aurora chose their mother. Blanche chose their father. This started a fight between them.

Olivia and Willow didn't agree to the idea of them being split between homes, so they told their daughters to think about it carefully. He and Olivia promised they would become a family again. Eventually, they decided to stay with their mother for the summer.

Will's heart broke. In that moment, his only children lost faith in him.

* * * *  
Will left for the convention one week later with his colleague, Prof. Mark Maple, and wondered if his passion had destroyed the one thing he truly loved: his family.

He buried himself in his task to study the titans on their home turf, determined to bring back answers for his wife. Encountering Lugia gave him many of the answers he sought, but brought with it a million more on the back of a new daunting challenge branded with a crimson R.

*end*


End file.
